Aleppo; The Missing Pieces of the Puzzle

A play portraying Aleppo debuts in Montreal

by Bahij Warda. Translated to English by Sara Hlaibeih

Aleppo. A Portrait of Absence felt like being at an airport. Before entering the theatre, you have to wait in front of a wooden map of Aleppo and choose a piece of the city, as if it were a ticket into the play.

Mixed feelings at the reception. Glasses removed, tears wiped, mask adjusted —the mandatory mask of the coronatimes. Put the glasses back on. Started looking for home, tried to point out the family home to a friend and share a memory. My friend’s eyes were crying, “Is this how we meet after five years apart!?”

I don’t know Aleppo and I don’t pretend otherwise. The streets, the landmarks, the famous restaurants are all only familiar to me because of TV. So I was crying-proof. I had only been there once, while on the road to another city. My dad had lived there. I didn’t pay attention as I walked around with him, I depended on his guidance and memory. I also never had friends from Aleppo until I moved to Montreal. Now most of my friends, and wife’s friends for that matter, are from Aleppo. Same goes for my neighbours. Montreal is compensating me for my past. 

So, I hear that Omar Abusaada’s, Mohammad Al Attar’s, and Bissane Al Charif’s Syrian play, Aleppo. A Portrait of Absence is part of Festival TransAmériques in Montreal, 26 May to 12 June 2021. And of course, I was the first in line. And the timing could not be any better! The indoor activities restrictions had started to loosen up, which was a good enough reason to celebrate, after a year and half of screen-based activities.

The virtual race to get tickets was brutal. By pure luck I got tickets for me and my friend to the last show. It was only the second day of ticket sales. But now I couldn’t stop thinking about my friend, especially after I saw his unbridled excitement to get the tickets. I got worried. I know some Syrians have emotional immunity, but what if he doesn’t? How is he going to meet his city? Is he going to cry? I think he probably will. Well, let him. Lucky him! Damn that emotional immunity.

After choosing one of the map’s ten pieces that represent the city’s neighbourhood, you get a recorder with a number which matches the one on the map piece you chose. You enter the memory realm. A dimmed auditorium where you have to find a table that resembles the map piece you’re carrying. If you’re from Aleppo, you look for the neighbourhood. A stranger, however, tries to match the shape, a little visual memory game. If you manage to find the right table, you place the piece on the mapped table, where it fits perfectly, and wait for who’s going to fill the chair across from you.

Somewhere in the dark, after we all took our seats, we hear Karim —a man from Aleppo who lives in Montreal— describing how sad he is because he started forgetting his favourite spots after years of being away. The actors enter from a dark corner and sit across from the audience, a glass barrier between us (an imposition of the health authorities). The recorder starts telling a story. I meet Adam, Sakanet Hanano neighbourhood, and his journey as a Kurd in an area with only memories of watching the city from afar, from Bustan Al Qasr hill.

Once the recorder stops, the actor’s role starts. A play for one. No one shares the show with you. It’s just you and the actor. On the contrary to our expectations, it wasn’t a collective experience kind of show. Thinking outside the box allowed every story to become a show on its own, a unique interaction with stories we had just heard from the recorder. All that accompanied with the freedom to comment, interact, and become part of this embracing show.

There were ten stories with twenty actors switching roles. The most challenging roles are the ones which are so familiar by the audience. They are so familiar it is almost like we wrote them. 

What can the actor tell me about my hometown that I don’t know? What details am I going to explore? Improvising doesn’t work here; the actor has lost the element of surprise. They might even lose grip on the role, like the actress seated across from my friend. 

My friend was shocked when he heard a familiar voice coming from the recorder. The female voice was a friend of his speaking about Aleppo. The actress across from him became confused and emotional, and instead of continuing her performance, she ended up sobbing, watching my friend overwhelmed as he retrieved and rebuilt his own memories in an unexpected, spontaneous performance.

Ever since the show, it has been a roller coaster down memory lane. Days have passed and my friend has not stopped showering me in details he wished he had the time to point out on the map. It is like being on the itinerary of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince — from Villa Rose, to Abu Abdo Viole restaurant, to Baron Hotel, and much more. The more exasperated I see him recalling these landmarks, the more I realize how successful the show must have been. To complete the missing parts of this portrait of absence, we attempt to retrieve the missing puzzle pieces in our fading memories.